Three girls - Amy, Brenda and Cecilia have pink, purple and red (not necessarily in this order) as their favourite colour. The following propositions hold true:
If Cecilia's favourite colour is red, then Amy's favourite colour is pink.
If Cecilia's favourite colour is purple, then Brenda's favourite colour is pink.
If Amy's favourite colour is not purple, then Brenda's favourite colour is red.
What is Brenda's favourite colour?
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
If Cecilia likes red, according to fact 1, Amy would like pink but considering fact 3, Amy not liking purple means Brenda likes red (and so does Cecilia) and we have two girls liking the same colour which is impossible. Hence red can't be Cecilia's favourite colour. If Cecilia likes purple, based on fact 2, Brenda would like pink, leaving red for Amy but considering fact 3 again, this means Amy doesn't like purple and Brenda would therefore like red which contradicts with our earlier deduction that she likes pink. So purple also isn't Cecilia's favourite colour.
Therefore Cecilia's favourite colour must be pink. Now we know that Amy and Brenda like red and purple but in which order? If Amy likes red (which means Amy's favourite colour is not purple), then Brenda would also like red employing fact 3 and we have two girls liking the same colour which is impossible.
Therefore Amy's favourite colour is purple. Finally, we conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Brenda's favourite colour is r e d .